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From his earliest works, [[Freud]] situated the concept of [[defence]] (''défense'') at the heart of his theory of [[neurosis]].
[[Defence ]] refers to the reaction of the [[ego]] to certain interior stimuli which the [[ego]] perceives as dangerous. Although [[Freud ]] later came to argue that there were different "[[defense mechanisms|mechanisms of defence]]' in addition to [[repression]]<ref>see Freud, 1926d</ref>, he makes it clear that repression is unique in the sense that it is constitutive of the [[unconscious]].
[[Anna Freud]] attempted to classify some of these mechanisms in her book [[The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence]] (1936).
Lacan is very critical of the way in which [[Anna Freud ]] and [[ego-psychology]] interpret the concept of [[defence]]. He argues that they confuse the concept of [[defence ]] with the concept of [[resistance]].<ref>Ec, 335</ref>For this reason, [[Lacan ]] urges caution when discussing the concept of [[defence]], and prefers not to centre his concept of psychoanalytic [[treatment]] around it. When he does discuss [[defence]], he opposes it to [[resistance]]; whereas resistances [[resistance]]s are transitory [[imaginary]] responses to intrusions of the [[symbolic]] and are on the side of the [[object]], defences are more permanent [[symbolic]] [[structures]] of [[subjectivity]] (which Lacan usually calls [[fantasy]] rather than defence).
This way of distinguishing between resistance and defence is quite different from that of other [[schools|schools of psychoanalysis]], which, if they have distinguished between defence and resistance at all, have generally tended to regard defences as transitory phenomena and resistances as more stable.
